When someone uses a specific, pejorative, widely associated with disaster (plague of Biblical scale, no less) word for a "local variable" he's being intellectually dishonest, or manipulative, or both. One generally can't just read a word locust and think "harmless", "cute", "needed" and such as a first thought - and that's exactly what this rhetoric aims for. That's the reason why I won't read the article. It's perfectly possible to use neutral language for presenting a point convincingly; I can't be bothered to read authors that didn't even try to do so.
[shrug] It's a different writing style, is all. If you read Venkatesh's other essays, you come away with the impression that he would wear the label "manipulative" on his sleeve. All speech or writing is manipulative, and to pretend otherwise is intellectually dishonest. :)
The comments here, as usual :) It's a habit of mine to read through all the comments before reading the linked article to decide whether it's worth reading.
If you think that my conclusion is wrong and you can quote a bit of the article to back it up then that's good, too!
With regard to the word "locust" being used pejoratively, I think that's a bit off the mark. Fairly close to the top of the essay, the author says "I've used (and continue to use) these services and don't feel entirely terrible about having done so [...] Why? It's because, like most of the working class, I've developed a locust morality."
I'm not sure if this invalidates your conclusion, but hopefully shed a slightly different light on things.
Personally, I'm not greatly taken with this particular essay. My favourite essay on that site is from a few years back: "Strategy, Tactics, Operations and Doctrine: A decision language tutorial" (http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2007/09/24/strategy-tactics/) He makes a rather telling remark about his primary interest being in doctrine. This might explain some of his modus operandi: I suspect he devices theories and makes analogies more to see how they will turn out than because he believes them.
See that's the 1% vampire behaviour. Relying on HN readers to comment on an article before deciding to read it. So those of us who read the article would be the 90%. Aha who's the 9% then, mods?
The 9% would be the bloggers - in particular those that left 'real jobs' to become part of the new wave of commentators.
Yes, they can produce huge volumes of readers when they get an HN hit, but once they've thoroughly exhausted the pent-up ideas that had been percolating for the previous decade, they realize that the only way to sustain themselves is to become increasingly sensationalist (since it's almost impossible to have earth-shattering ideas on a strictly weekly basis).
